


Band-Aid Solution

by SeRose (Sarosia)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 09:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11940969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarosia/pseuds/SeRose
Summary: Cleaning up her old room, Jasmine finds two Band-Aids stuck to her closet wall.





	Band-Aid Solution

Cleaning is awful and it never stops. Clutter gathers. Dust breeds. Spiders live and die and just leave their stuff everywhere.

 

Kids are the worst. Somehow, their stuff breeds with itself to create even more stuff. Like the spiders, they leave it everywhere. Abandoned Hot Wheels, Pokemon cards, Beanie Babies...all the remnants of childhood that just got left behind.

 

Ten years ago, Jasmine had done the same thing as everyone else. She'd went to college and to an apartment later while all of her old things sat locked up in her father's house, gathering dust and spiders and whatever else wandered in.

 

Facing the mess for the first time in years, Jasmine wanted to shut the door and head home right now. This wasn't her problem. It was her past self's problem. She'd grown up. She'd become someone else. But, by royal decree, she had to be the one to pack everything up even if she was going to just throw it all out anyway.

 

At least she didn't have the problem of someone else wanting to help her clean. That someone else was usually her brother Micah and his idea of helping was basically to stand in the doorway and spend all day pointing out what she needed to get rid of. Yeah, things were being gotten rid of. No, it is _not_ your place to say anything about what needed to be gone. There wasn't much she was planning on hanging on to, but that was her choice.

 

There were cups in the shape of Pokemon smiling down from where they'd been on top of her old chest of drawers since junior high. Her old bed sat under a mountain of magazines over a decade old and towers of books that had collapsed into a spread out pile.

 

Even more books filled the closet. She would probably take most of those with her.

 

Along with the books, the closet house even more boxes overflowing. Everywhere she looked there was just more stuff. It was a hoarder's wet dream and her girlfriend's worst nightmare. There was no way Jasmine was going to be dragging her into helping with this. Every inch of Jasmine's old bedroom - not to mention her father's entire house - would set off Lori's OCD.

 

The floor was covered mostly by a carpet of old clothes and for a long while, Jasmine just stared at the ruin of a room trying to figure out what had happened. It couldn't have always been like this, could it?

 

A week later, she was getting close. Clothes all bagged up and thrown into the hall to be sorted later for Goodwill. Boxes of crap piled upon other boxes of crap against the wall. For the first time in years, Jasmine vacuumed her carpet. It was a good carpet after having the layer of stuff keeping it fresh and untouched.

 

It was a pale blue. She hadn't remembered that. Kinda pretty.

 

Jasmine pulled boxes out of the closet, simultaneously basking and revolting in the past that washed over her. These went against the wall as well unless they had to be moved into another box. In the end, she'd skim through all of the boxes to see what was worth going to Goodwill and someone else or the dump.

 

Jasmine had gotten to the point where she could sit in the middle of the closet. It made it a little easier to grab stuff and shove it in more boxes. An old Harry Potter poster had managed to get itself stuck to the wall in the shadows and she had to really work to pry it off. When it popped free, she fell back.

 

There was something on the wall behind it. Without any light, she couldn't tell anything other than it looked like a dark X on the wall. Jasmine rolled the poster up on her way to get a flashlight and stuffed it in one of the nearest boxes.

 

Jasmine stuck her head back in the closet and hit the X with the light. Two Band-Aids had been stuck over each other in the wall. Both of them had come from the same pack and had tiny pictures of Scooby Doo on a blue background.

 

Jasmine cleaned out the rest of the closet before crouching down in front of the X. She picked at it for a minute with her fingernails and had to go find a razor blade from the bathroom. Jasmine had managed to get a thin line away from the wall.

 

Someone knocked just outside her bedroom and Jasmine's automatic response was to smooth it back flat. She stared in horror at what she'd just done. "Shit."

 

Jasmine stuck her head out into the room, fully prepared to yell at whoever had startled her and made her screw up what she was doing. Seeing who it was had her up and running to jump on him.

 

Micah laughed, holding her up for a minute. "Guess some old dogs can learn new tricks."

 

Feet on the ground, she punched him in the chest, making the blow soft with a laugh. "What are you doing home? Dad didn't say - "

 

"He didn't know." Micah grinned. "So, what wild hair brought this on?"

 

"I felt like it." The look on his face told her that he didn't believe that for a second and she sighed. "Okay, so Dad gave me a small ultimatum."

 

"Did it sound something like," Micah lowered his voice, "'You gotta get your shit or _all_ of it's going to the dump?'"

 

Jasmine laughed. "It sounded a lot like that. Who in the Hell gave him the idea he'd rather live in an apartment than a house?"

 

Micah held up his hands. "It wasn't me. Probably one of those friends of his."

 

"Always knew they were bad news. Are you here to get the rest of your stuff, too?"

 

"Yeah, a couple things." He leaned around her to look at the closet. "Uh, what were you doing in there?"

 

"Cleaning. Because it is now my life."

 

"If you didn't always hold onto so much, then you wouldn't have this problem."

 

"Blah, blah, blah. Here, help me with one problem." Jasmine went back to the closet.

 

"Hey, are you actually going to let me help you clean for once?"

 

"Hell no." Jasmine crouched down and waved him inside. "Did you, in some weird childhood fit, put these here?"

 

Micah's body killed most of the light coming into the closet and Jasmine was glad she had the light. There was the tiniest flash of recognition in his eyes before Micah was wrinkling his nose in disgust. "No. Ew. No. That seems more like your thing."

 

"God, is that what you think of me? That I'd stick used Band-Aids on the wall? Anyway, I don't remember it." She started picking at it again. "Are you sure - "

 

"Hey, let's go get some lunch. My treat." He'd left the closet. Something was wrong. Micah had his hands shoved deep in his pockets, back to the door. He was usually so relaxed, but right now, every muscles seemed tight as a string.

 

Jasmine left the X alone. "Sure. I could eat."

 

Micah laughed and it was too tight as well. "When can't you? Mexican or burgers?"

 

"Mexican. I could use some spice."

 

Jasmine tried to keep her focus on her food - after all, it was much better than burgers would have been - but Micah's reaction to the Band-Aids on the wall kept pushing into the front of her mind.

 

"You know," she kept her voice soft, "I don't care if you're the one that put them in my closet. It's not like I'm going to get mad or something."

 

The change was instant. Micah's face froze, muscles pulling tight. He sat a little straighter in his seat and slowly finished chewing the bite in his mouth. "Put what in your closet?"

 

"Micah."

 

"Leave it alone, Jasmine. Can you do that?" Something leaked into his voice that she'd never heard from him before. It scared her.

 

"Micah, what's wrong?"

 

"Please, Jazzy. Don't mess with it and soon it'll be someone else's problem." He was really begging, now. Her big brother didn't beg.

 

"Unless the problem is keeping bacteria out of a scrape in the back of my closet, I don't see how band-aids are doing any good there." Jasmine tried for it to be a joke, but it obviously fell flat. Something was bothering him. Something big.

 

Micah wasn't looking at her anymore. "They have to stay there. They have to, Jazzy."

 

"Okay, Micah. I'll leave them alone."

 

He wasn't the same for the rest of the meal. Back at home, he got what he came for and left. Jasmine held off of going into her closet until he was gone. This time, she started with the razor blade. She freed up most of each leg and only nicked herself once. Jasmine set the blade on the floor beside her and pulled the X the rest of the way off.

 

There was a hole on the wall underneath. It was a perfect circle about the size of the head of a thumb tack. Small and dark. Jasmine pressed one finger over the hole and felt a puff of hot air.

 

She leaned down until she could look into the hole. She couldn't see anything, but air was still coming from it.

 

Without warning, the flow of air reversed and Jasmine suddenly felt something pulling her face toward the hole in the wall. Jasmine had to brace her hands on the wall to keep her face from hitting the wall. After only a few seconds, though, her arms shook as she was pulled closer to the hole.

 

With a ripping sound, an old shirt tore free of its hanger. It was sucked into the tiny hole and was gone. Jasmine wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it go inches from her eyes. The hanger quickly followed, disappearing into nothing. It cut across her head on its way, leaving a burning mark over her forehead before it was gone.

 

Jasmine's arms were starting to bend. It was pulling her in. She screamed and it, too, was swallowed by the hole. Her face was almost to the hole, her skin felt like it was being pulled from her face.

 

Arms slid around her waist and suddenly she was moving away from the wall. As soon as she was out of the closet, Jasmine was thrown around. The boxes against the wall were flying into the closet and she knew she would never see them again. Jasmine was pushed toward the door and she went without question. In the hall, she couldn't feel the suction anymore. Micah dove into the hall and hugged the wall opposite her door.

 

"What did I say?!" He yelled.

 

Jasmine was entranced in watching the boxes - some of them had to be at least fifty pounds - fly into the closet like Mary Poppins' bag. All of these old things, gone. And she'd almost went with them.

 

Holding onto the edge of the door, Jasmine said the only thing she could think to. "Sorry."

 

Micah slid down the wall to sit on the floor. "Good thing you have a lot of shit to feed it with."

 

"What?"

 

"If it gets full with your things, we won't have to give it anything else."

 

Her legs were shaking when she went to sit beside him. "What is it?"

 

The sucking sound from her bedroom was getting louder.

 

"Drain."

 

"Excuse me?"

 

"It's a drain," he had to speak up for her to hear it. "All houses have them."

 

"Where did you hear that?"

 

It was sounding more and more like a train as it sucked everything down.

 

"Guy I was friends with back in grade school. He showed me his at a sleepover. They help you get junk out of the house if you feed it regularly. Starve it like we did this one and...you see what happens."

 

"Why were there Band-Aids on it? How did they hold it in?"

 

Micah shrugged. "Dunno. I told you to leave it alone."

 

"This 'drain' thing is not common knowledge, Micah!" She screamed over the roar.

 

After thirty minutes, the sound had died down to a whistle. Micah stood and pulled Jasmine up. Together, they entered the room. Everything that wasn't a part of the house had been stripped away. The whistled died by the time they stepped into the closet. Micah touched the hole.

 

"It's fine, now."

 

"Are you sure?"

 

"No. I put the Band-Aids on it because I didn't know anything about it and didn't want to deal with it." Micah said.

 

When Dad got home that night, his kids were sitting on the couch watching TV. He asked, "Taking a break?"

 

"Finished. Room's empty, now, so there's that." Jasmine said.

 

Dad looked from one to the other, the surprise evident. "Good deal. What's for dinner?"

 

"Whatever you can find." Micah said. "Isn't that the rule around here?"

 

Dad laughed all the way into the kitchen.

 

Voice low, Jasmine said, "You know, if you'd told me about the drain sooner, I wouldn't have spent this entire week cleaning for nothing."

 

Micah shrugged. "Didn't think about it."

 

"You didn't think about the black hole in my closet? That never crossed your mind?"

 

He shook his head. "Nope. I haven't seen it in at least twenty years. Can you remember anything from twenty years ago?"

 

After that, Jasmine didn't go back to the house. She didn't want to see her empty room again or the large X of duct tape now covering the hole in the closet.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
